Model comparison
Nova 2 Lite vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Nova 2 Lite scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Nova 2 Lite leads 40.6 to 31.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Nova 2 Lite and 41.4% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 41K.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 38.5 |
| Released | 2025-12-01 | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 41K |
| Max output | 64K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.50 | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 19 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1386 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | 41.4% |
Reasoning Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1364 | 1398 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 8% |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.63 |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1359 | 1394 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70.3% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1360 | 1395 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1337 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1364 | 1434 |
| LMArena French | 1381 | 1419 |
| LMArena German | 1343 | 1379 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1273 | 1338 |
| LMArena Korean | 1284 | 1333 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1369 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1372 | 1403 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1335 | 1364 |
Long Context Nova 2 Lite leads
Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1335 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)
| Benchmark | Nova 2 Lite | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1362 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1318 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1338 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Nova 2 Lite better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Nova 2 Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.
Is Nova 2 Lite or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
Nova 2 Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 37.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nova 2 Lite does, with 1M tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Nova 2 Lite and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nova 2 Lite has 19 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.